Radio Telescope icon.
August 6, 2015
Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico
The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico will soon lose its title of the largest single aperture radio telescope ever constructed. The Chinese are building a Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope, shortened to FAST, which when complete in 2016 will be the world's largest radio telescope and three times more sensitive than the Arecibo Observatory.
The telescope is being built in a remote part of Guizhou province in southern China, in an area that is “radio silent” as there are no towns and cities within a radius of 5 km and only one county centre within 25 km.
Artist’s rendering of what FAST would look like when complete
The gigantic radio telescope will be placed in a natural crater-like depression and will consist of 4,600 triangular panels that could be moved to change the overall shape of the dish’s reflective surface, allowing it to scan large swathes of the sky.
Astronomers expect FAST to uncover thousands of new galaxies and deep-sky objects up to 7 billion light years away. FAST will probably remain the best in the world in the next twenty to thirty years after it is completed.
FAST Radio telescope under construction
The gigantic radio telescope will cost approximately 1.2 billion Yuan (£120 million), making it the biggest astronomy project China has ever had.
It will allow scientists to get weaker radio signals from outer space, even further than our solar system, reported People's Daily Online.
For more information about Five hundred meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), visit: (Wikipédia) https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_hundred_meter_Aperture_Spherical_Telescope
Images, Text, Credits: SETI/American Scientist/Yibada/Orbiter.ch Aerospace.
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